Healing the Bloodline

A Test of Faith

Trauma and suffering travel down a family's bloodlines, staying in what in Sanskrit is called the Bhāvanā, until someone is prepared to dive into their depths and heal it. With greater consciousness and what Gurdjieff calls, ‘inner separation’ healing is possible.

Linear time does not apply to this healing; you can heal one’s ancestors if you have the tools and means. This will speed up consciousness suffering and burn up sanscara. The sins of the father will not be visited upon the son.

I spent two years watching my Father die. The rare form of liver cancer caused by blood pressure pills he was prescribed was the cause we later discovered. An athlete and former professional footballer he had lived a healthy life, although as I have written before he suffered a mental breakdown in his forties. At the age of 64, he left us. Over two hundred people attended his funeral, but they could not all fit in the church.

Witnessing all this made me feel that I had held my breath for two years and my stomach was an enormous knot; this was an experience I could not digest. Yet, life goes on and one gets up and goes to work. The pain carried forward.

As I wrote last week, the sweat lodge had allowed me a deeper connection with my Father and the beginning of healing: that strange experience I described as Fire-Keeper last week. We all become more present in life by facing our souls and by examining the indelible imprints we carry from the past. Wisdom tells us that inner conflicts that are not fully faced must be lived outside oneself as fate. Healing is part of our soul’s journey and we heal to transcend or expand as William Blake puts it.

My cancer was diagnosed a year and a half ago, bowel cancer, and I felt on some level I had been digesting a great deal of other people’s shit for a long time. I have written about this both honestly and creatively in these sub-stacks before.

I do not believe you can ‘fight cancer’, instead I decided to surrender completely to God’s Will. I had no power in this other than to stay present and those thirty-odd years of meditation and other spiritual practices were invaluable. This was the ultimate test of faith. I kept up regular meditation and prayerful practices and only asked that ‘Gods will be done.’ I did not goggle my condition and I only accepted help from others if they offered it freely and my part was to receive it.

In an early substack on Psycho-Geography, I wrote about my extraordinary day walking around Bristol. It was on that day that I bought an Arkana edition of ‘The Magus of Stravolis, in which I found a remarkable healing practice that throughout my cancer treatment and chemotherapy I practiced twice a day. I will record this for those paid subscribers shortly. This was a book that I had read some thirty years ago and lost, suddenly and strangely it was returned to me now in my time of need. If I had not read it before I would not have purchased it.

So far so good.

After my operation, but before my chemotherapy in deep meditation on the 5th of July 2023 an inner voice spoke to me, as it had done before in my life on several important hinge moments: when I was told to be a teacher, through a Medium when I was told to take the job at Crosfield and now after my operation. The voice was as direct and as clear as it had ever been: ‘I can heal you anytime I want.’ My reply was instantaneous, ‘Could you please get one with it.’

The instructions I was given were very clear, almost ridiculously so:

‘You must go to Canterbury Cathedral tomorrow, take money from £100 from the bank and give some money to any beggar you see, and get them to bless you. You must not buy or pay for anything yourself while you are there. When you get to the Cathedral you must go to the Crypt where Beckett’s body was laid after his death. Here you must pray for forgiveness for your family.’

I recall walking down the stairs and telling my wife what I had to do. Bless her, she just said fine, and we started looking for a hotel. It seems crazy and irrational now, but over the years I have always learned to follow this voice whether it spoke in dreams, through mediums, or directly to me. It’s impossible to say, but to me, it is the voice of God, and it must be followed and adhered to.

Before I traveled to Canterbury I saw my PA, Nina, and she gave me a rose. She loves flowers. I took it with me. The world became for a day a living mythos and us characters within that energetic movement.

I should explain that Canterbury Cathedral has always been a sacred and special place for me; at University I worked there operating the audiovisual unit and even graduated there. But I had not been back for many years.

After checking in at the hotel my wife and I made our way out into the streets on this strange pilgrimage. Immediately I was accosted by a beggar to who I handed a £20 note, unprompted he said ‘God Bless you.’ Something similar happened down towards the Cathedral. Walking in, and rose in hand, I looked at the vaulted ceiling in the knave and was aware of God’s magnificence. I realised that God is only in the moment we; made our way to the crypt. There were no further instructions and once there I laid the rose in front of the icon of Thomas Beckett, lit a candle, and sat to pray. This was where the original shrine was.

I took out the photograph of my Father and suddenly, a wave of the most pure and intense emotion burst through me from nowhere and I found myself sobbing and crying. Yet, the witnessing element of my mind, what in the Vedic tradition is called the Buddhi, was ‘still’ and could watch this emotional reaction taking place. An image then arose in my imagination and for this to make sense I need to explain a little piece of family history.

My father was very close to his Uncle Jack who worked the family farm at Arborfield in Berkshire. The plan was that he would work on the farm when he returned from his National Service. My father returned to find his Uncle had died and the farm had been sold.

The grief I was expressing was my father’s grief, his deep deep sadness. This is when his heart closed and where the cancer in my family’s line started. The image I saw in my mind’s eye was of my Father and my Great uncle meeting in a country line, embracing, and then walking away happily together into the sunset. This was healing on another level.

Once this had happened the emotion ceased and I knew the ritual had been completed. My wife and I left the Crypt and we walked up the stone steps into the knave. A Priest was there, I told him my story and he prayed with me. In one of those strange and surreal juxtapositions while this happened the comedian and entertainer Vic Reeves with his family walked past!

Afterward, we went outside into the Sun and sat on a bench.

As we sat there in silence a butterfly continually landed upon me. This creature symbolised new life to me.

The experience was complete.

The butterfly flew away and we returned to the everyday world.

I have written these substacks for a year now and I am grateful for the audience I have. More people prepared to pay would be wonderful, but the substacks will continue nevertheless. More than anything they will remain as a record of my life for my two wonderful children when I am gone.

Next week I will write about my contact with Swami Ambikananda and what I learned from her.

West Bay - Christmas Eve 2024.